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Amazon and Groceries: How Amazon can put the hurt to supermarkets.

Amazon is poised to take the super market industry by storm, when it revealed late last year that it was test running a grocery store. This grocery store utilizes technology called “Just Walk Out” technology, which is a combination of computer vision, deep learning algorithms and sensor fusion. What this does it allow for the artificial intelligence do scan your phone when you enter the store, and keep up with the items you take and put back onto the shelves in real time. So even if you take an item and then put it back, you will not be charged. Then instead of waiting on line, you just have to walk out of the store and your amazon account will automatically be charged and a receipt sent to you phone. This is new type of store has the potential to utterly destroy not only super market chains, but almost every kind of brick and mortar store available. Companies like Amazon will only need a fraction of the employees to fully operate the store as the previous need for cashiers will be gone. The only people needed will be janitors, people to restock the groceries and an overall manager to address any issues. And as this spreads to other stores like game stop and other kinds of retail, people will begin to lose jobs at a very fast pace as more and more jobs are simply no longer needed because of technology simply being better.

So one question remains, how do new comers compete with giants like Amazon. Well the short answer is they have to have everything connected to the internet. To describe this best i suggest going to 5:30 in the video above. What Taylor does to solve the problem of having to turn away walk ins, is symbolic of what the age to come is going to bring, utilization of the internet and adapting it to your needs. Taylor describes how he has a button at his place of work that they press every time they have to turn away a walk in customer. This builds a map for them of when they need staff as opposed to when they don’t. This allows them to place they employees on the clock when they are needed most and have less people on when work is slow. Adaption and thinking like this will allow smaller stores to compete with larger companies like amazon. And both are going to be the future of retail around the world.